PhotoFocus by Scott Bourne

I’m going to do something I don’t think I’ve ever done before. I am going to highly recommend a program that runs only on Windows. In fact, I am going to recommend a program that’s so good, I bought an HP laptop running Windows 7 JUST so I could run Sony VEGAS’ Professional NLE. Nobody is more shocked than me.

As a die-hard Mac guy, this is a big step for me. But enough about that. Let’s talk about the one professional video editor I’ve tried that’s affordable, easy-to-use, and a good fit for photographers who want to jump into editing their hybrid video footage.

Let me say this is a mini-review. I won’t cover all the features of this program. I’ll write about it from a photographer’s point of view.

My main concern as a photographer is how I get footage from the various fusion cameras I own, i.e., Canon 1D MK IV, Nikon D7000 and assorted compact and mirror-less cameras, into a non-linear editor, add sound, special effects, color correction, etc., and then get it out into a usable format. Sony Vegas Pro 10 is how.

I own Final Cut, iMovie, and Adobe Premiere. With the exception of iMovie, they are all over my head. But using Vegas, within an hour, I was able to import multiple kinds of video and still footage onto one timeline, edit the in and out points, color correct, add transitions like cross fades, add simple titles, do some audio sweetening and prepare for output to everything from Apple .MOV files to Windows WMV files to Blu-Ray at the hit of a button thanks to an amazing export template offered in Vegas Pro 10.

Sony Vegas Pro 10 combines video effects, media generators and animation tools to help you produce incredible final footage.

One thing I really like about this program is that it doesn’t matter what kind of footage you place on the timeline, Vegas can handle it. It mixes and matches H.264, Mov, AVCHD, XDCAM EX, RED and many more onto the same timeline then figures out how to make it work on export. The program supports SD, HD, 2K, and 4K workflows. read more...